Robert Livingston Movies
Livingston was born Robert Randall. Raised in California, he began his professionl life as a reporter. In the late '20s he began performing onstage and in film shorts. By 1934 he had become an actor in feature films, and in 1936 he began a long stretch as a cowboy star: alongside costars Crash Corrigan and Max Terhune, he appeared as Stony Brooke in the Three Mesquiteers series of Westerns, going on to play the character 29 times; the Mesquiteers were among the Top Ten Western Box-Office attractions in every year from 1937-43. In 1939 he portrayed the Lone Ranger in a serial, then in the early '40s he remained popular as the costar of the Lone Rider series with sidekick Fuzzy St. John; meanwhile, he also played romantic leads in a number of B-movies. Later he appeared in occasional character roles. He was briefly married to starlet Margaret Roach, daughter of film pioneer Hal Roach. His brother was minor actor and singing cowboy Jack Randall. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1935
Big Mike (Wallace Beery) is a tough Army flyer who longs to see his son Little Mike (Robert Young) take to the air like himself. Little Mike's excessive attraction to Dare (Rosalind Russell) strains his relationship with his father, but eventually he finds the right woman -- Skip (Maureen O'Sullivan), the daughter of Army commandant General Carter (Lewis Stone) -- and an airborne Little Mike does his father proud. Bit-Part Alert: Watch for the brief appearance of then up-and-coming MGM contract player Robert Taylor as Jaskerelli. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wallace Beery, Robert Young, (more)
- 1934
Based on a novel by Cortland Fitzsimmons, the storyline of this "gimmick" mystery follows the St. Louis Cardinals during a championship season. The arrival of hotshot pitcher Larry Kelly (Robert Young) coincides with an apparent plot to sabotage the Cards' chances of making it to the World Series. A failed attempt to poison all the pitcher's mitts is followed by a series of murders: catcher Dunk Spencer (Joe Sauers) is shot while sprinting to third base, pitcher Frank Higgins (Robert Livingston) is strangled in the locker room, and lovable catcher Truck Hogan (Nat Pendleton) is killed with an arsenic-laden hot dog. Finding himself one of the many suspects, Kelly nearly becomes a victim as well when he is slipped a booby-trapped baseball. With the help of sportscaster Jimmy Downey (Paul Kelly), Kelly exposes the murderer, surviving to win the pennant and the heroine, team secretary daughter Frances Clark (Madge Evans). Partly filmed on location at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field (home of the Chicago Cubs' minor-league LA farm team), Death on the Diamond offers a fresh slant to the standard whodunit format, with some particularly good work by Ted Healy as an exasperated umpire. That MGM produced the film is tipped off by two of the studio's trademarks: The killer's last-minute confession, wherein the guilty party transforms from a mild-mannered soul into a raving lunatic, and the shoddy process-screen work in the ballgame scenes. Future stars Mickey Rooney, Walter Brennan and Bruce Bennett show up in bit roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Young, Madge Evans, (more)
- 1934
Robert Young had to be the busiest leading man in Hollywood in 1934. He appeared in no fewer than nine pictures, four of them at his home studio of MGM. The Band Plays On features Young as one of four close pals, who have grown up together and are now college football champs known as "The Four Bombers". So inseparable are these chums that, when one is injured in a car accident, the remaining three quit the team. But everyone is back on the field for the inevitable Big Game, including Young, who of course scores the winning T.D. Robert Young plays a football star as realistically as he'd played a baseball star in the earlier Death on the Diamond (34)--meaning that the film relies a heavily on stunt doubles and process screens. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Young, Stuart Erwin, (more)
- 1931
Joan Crawford and William Bakewell play the spoiled-rotten grown children of stockbroker William Holden. When Wall Street lays its famous egg in 1929, Crawford and Bakewell find that they can no longer pursue their flamboyant lifestyle (for example, they'll have to put a moratorium on the sort of "lingerie parties" with which this film opens). Crawford gets a newspaper job, while Bakewell ties up with vicious bootlegger Clark Gable. When Gable is implicated in the murder of seven gangsters (a transparent reenactment of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre), Crawford's fellow reporter Cliff Edwards gets proof of Gable's complicity. Bakewell is ordered to kill Edwards; Crawford, not knowing of her brother's actions, takes Edwards' place, wooing Gable in hopes of getting a scoop. When Gable finds out that Crawford's working undercover (so to speak), he prepares to rub her out, but her life is saved by Bakewell at the cost of his own. Compared to the rest of the stick-figure leading men in Dance Fools Dance, Clark Gable stood out like a testosterone-soaked thumb, and it wouldn't be long before he'd be promoted from villains to heroes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Crawford, Cliff Edwards, (more)
